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What Happened to Your Civil Liberties During the 2017 Legislative Session

Posted: September 21, 2017|

Hundreds of bills and countless hours later, late on September 19th the General Assembly’s Legislative Session for 2017 finally came to a close. While we usually see the end of the session come during the morning hours of June, this year, after an abrupt recess of the House due to budget disagreements between both chambers, the end of session came much later than anticipated.

This year, the ACLU of RI lobbied on over 300 bills, both good and bad, and as usual many -- but not all -- of our efforts paid off as we saw important pro-civil liberties legislation pass and other anti-civil liberties bills die. Here's a recap:

So, all in all, things could've been better, and they could have been worse - at least legislatively speaking. To learn more about this year's session as it related to civil liberties, visit the legislative section of our website.